Organizing a community response to environmental injustice: Walpole island's heritage centre as a social movement organization

Abstract

This paper addresses how the concepts of social learning and communities-of-practice explain the role of cultural meanings around social problems and the affect of efforts by social movement organizations to expand their membership and to retain community support. Drawing on data accumulated using an ethnographic approach; I use a close study of the Heritage Centre of the Walpole Island First Nation in southwestern Ontario as a social movement organization to trace compatible threads in organizational and social movement theory. I show how the Heritage Centre's strategies and ideology are determined through its relationship with the community of which it is a part.

Citation

Van Wynsberghe, R. (2001), "Organizing a community response to environmental injustice: Walpole island's heritage centre as a social movement organization", Hartwell, S.W. and Schutt, R.K. (Ed.) The Organizational Response to Social Problems (Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 221-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0196-1152(01)80012-0